Emma didn't want Mickey to come back from the airport.
Well no. That wasn't exactly true. She did want Mickey to come back from the airport; she wanted him to come back from the airport quite a lot.
But she didn't want the people from the photograph to come with him.
That was how she thought of them. "The people from the photograph". The beautiful woman in the black dress and the grinning man, dressed in a posh suit that stood in a Las Vegas casino and smiled along with Mickey, Ash and Albert, tucked away neatly in Mickey's wallet.
It had started with a postcard.
A sleek, shiny postcard promising a phone call. And then, a few days later, the hour long phone call, consisting of the one phone they had in the penthouse being passed between Albert, Mickey and Ash. She could remember that Sean was out, with the current mark. Emma sat alone, staring at the TV screen although it may as well have been turned off. She tried distracting herself. She made a drink. She went and stood on the balcony. She even went to bed for a while. But as much as she tried, within five minutes she'd find herself back on the sofa again, drinking in every detail of the conversation that she could hear.
And then Mickey hung up. And announced to everyone that Danny and Stacie would be coming back to London.
And that was when it hit her. That was when she realised that these fictional characters that she'd envied at time, that had occupied so much of her friends' attention actually had names. And they were real. And now they were going to become a part of her life.
Emma found, in the weeks that we prepared for they're arrival that she actually started looking forward to them coming. It'd be nice to have another woman round, wouldn't it?
And as much as she thought about it, Emma really did start looking forward to meeting "the people from the photograph", that now in her mind they'd actually turned into "Stacie and Danny". Being on the streets with her brother since she was fourteen, and then having lived with Mickey and the others for the last six months she'd never really had any friends that were female or, admittedly, long term friends outside of her and Sean's life alone, when they were constantly on the move.
She imagined shopping trips and clothes swapping and conversations they'd have and smiled to herself, then laughed a little at her little-girlish state of imagination.
But as Emma sat at their usual table in Eddie's Bar now, she felt the light formation of her thoughts drop, and instead she felt worried, and nervous.
She wasn't sure if she'd ever wanted anyone to like her this much before.
Sean sat beside her in silence, and unusually she couldn't tell what he was thinking about. Ash and Albert talked with Eddie at the bar, and the four drinks in front of them, one of which was Emma's, seemed to have been forgotten about.
She thought back to last night, which had felt a little like it would be the last night before her wedding. Emma already knew how much she wanted to impress the other grifters when they arrived tomorrow, and it was almost like her last free moment to relax.
Emma wasn't sure if she hoped or thought there would be some sort of celebration, but instead Sean, Mickey and Ash shifted a bookshelf from one of the two bedrooms they'd had to clear in the apartment, which they'd had to move furniture around in throughout the last week in order to create space. It had always marvelled Emma by its size, but it did a little more when she realised it would still comfortably fit the seven of them.
The seven of them. That sounded strange.
Emma still couldn't work out how Sean felt about this. He didn't seem to be worrying much, like she was, and showed the appropriate amount of excitement in front of the others. She wasn't sure if his relatively carefree attitude went past his face or not.
Recently, she'd found that Sean and her weren't as close as usual, that she couldn't understand him as much. Maybe it was the fact that they'd spent so long alone together, and within the last six months there were suddenly other people in their lives that they'd lost touch a little. Maybe it was just them that had changed.
Emma, usually, would have counted herself as a patient person. Not in the sense that she could sit calmly through any amount of build up, but usually she could grin and bear it, and not let anything affect her so much.
Today, impatience nibbled harder than usual at her brain. She wasn't sure if she wanted Danny and Stacie to arrive or not, but she didn't want forever to be this time that already seemed like days, sitting in Eddie's Bar and waiting.
Waiting.
And then she heard a car draw up outside.
She watched Ash say something, get up and leave. Albert and Sean, who'd seemed to have gotten bored of her silence, watched Ash go. For next two minutes, butterflies stung the inside of her stomach.
Then the doors swung open, and muffled conversation and laughter were released into Eddie's Bar. Emma watched the people in the photograph, rush to the bar and hug Albert and also Eddie. Sean shook their hands and smiled.
Emma observed the strangers separately, watching them as they hugged and chatted with the others. The woman, Stacie, was as beautiful as she had been in the photograph. Emma found there was a moment when Stacie's eye caught Mickey and they smiled at each other, and that a jealous string would tug softly at her heart.
Danny was how Emma had imagined him, only more so. He spoke in a loud, cheerful cockney accent and laughed a lot, seeming to talk endlessly to everyone. From the other side she could make out words he was saying, hear which drink he demanded from Eddie.
She wanted to go over there and meet them. But she didn't; she felt suddenly shy. And in her moment of decision making, Sean went and spoilt it all.
"I'll go and find Emma."
She sunk a little further into her seat, realising how strange it would seem that she'd been hiding all this time. She got up from her seat and went over to where the others were, crossing paths with her brother.
"Where've you been he asked?" Sean asked.
Emma looked around for inspiration, wishing she'd had time to make up an excuse.
"I was… at the apartment."
Sean regarded her for a second, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I had to get something… I've been about fifteen minutes; didn't you notice I was gone?"
He continued to stare at her, looking a little disbelieving but saying nothing.
"I ran," she said, quickly, remembering fifteen minutes was a little unlikely.
Emma stalked past him, before her story would grow anymore; instead hoping it would join a stack of forgotten conversations.
"There you are," Mickey said, smiling and turning to face her. "This is Danny Blue and Stacie Monroe. Emma Kennedy."
He gestured as he spoke, and Emma shook hands with each of them, going in seconds from warm to cooler, smoother skin.
She sat down on a bar stool and listened to their conversation, laughing at appropriate times as Stacie, Danny and Mickey shared stories. She wasn't so much joining in the conversation as taking in every part of them, taking pictures for her mind and listening to their voices.
Watching them.
Emma found she didn't exactly know what to say. She wanted to contribute something to the conversation, or at least try to appear interesting but she'd left it too long now and the others were talking about a con they'd worked together years back.
Without her.
But after a while, she listened to what they were saying and she laughed, really laughed. Because what they were saying was interesting, and as uninvolved as she was Emma felt like she was really listening to the words and understanding, not just observing.
After a while, she felt like she liked Danny and Stacie. And she wanted to get to know them better.
They left Eddie's Bar at around half eight, and headed back to the apartment, each taking a suitcase, or in Albert's case, a briefcase of which the contents currently remained an excited mystery.
Mickey waited for Emma at the door of the penthouse.
"Well done," he said, sarcastically, smiling as she passed him the suitcase.
"Well, you know, it's a hard job but someone has to do it."
A smile danced between them and they laughed. Emma turned around to take the suitcase to a previously waiting Stacie, only in time to see her disappear into her room.
They opted for ordering take out for dinner; it was too late to go to a restaurant as they did fifty percent of the time and nobody wanted to cook. It came quickly and Ash sorted out 'paying'.
The seven of them sat and ate their curry together like old friends. The TV was turned on and Danny and Sean had each flicked through the channels for a while but after moments it had melted into that general hum of background noise. They talked about the past, mainly about what Danny and Stacie had done in America and cons they'd worked years ago with Ash, Albert and Mickey but some more recent stories, which Emma found she could involve herself in more and contribute the occasional sentence.
One by one, everyone retired to their rooms. Emma, last up, disposed of the leftover curry and took her now half full glass of wine on to the balcony, mentally evaluating her day.
She immediately felt Sean drift up behind her, and turned around as she felt his presence. They smiled at each other, and Emma felt a strange feeling of discomfort that she hadn't experienced before around her brother.
"The new people seem nice," Sean said.
"Yeah, they do," Emma agreed. She thought. "Except if you think about it we're the "new people", really, aren't we?"
Sean looked at her and the moment paused.
"Yeah, but it doesn't feel like that."
Emma stayed silent in response, not feeling able to share with her brother that yes, it did feel like that. It felt just like that.
The two of them shared a silence, that seemed to last far too long. Emma looked at her empty glass and considered going inside, but she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep yet and it was comfortably cold outside.
The world seemed to wait for something, anything, to happen.
"Ok, night," Sean said, finishing his drink and turning inside to go back inside.
Emma whispered a reply, but he was already gone.
She turned back to her drink, and the street underneath her, again feeling strangely apart from her brother. It wasn't as if they weren't getting on, it was just that she seemed to have lost the feeling of security that she used to have, where could tell Sean what she was thinking and he'd understand. Or he would be thinking it too.
Emma knew it would be a while before she could get to sleep, but she went inside anyway. The idea of sleep was comforting, to know that she could fast forward to tomorrow where something other than the following scary hours of silence where thoughts screamed out was still there, somehow.
Hi!
Ok, so I love Hustle and it's my favourite show. I'd only seen Series 4 and 5 up until a few months ago, so my first Hustle fanfic, Breathe For Me isn't very accurate to the show and characterisation and such. I'm still writing that, but it's on hold for a while and as people are starting to write stuff involving the new crew I thought I'd do so to, but without rejecting Stacie and Danny. So I'll update soon. Thanks for reading the first chapter and I hope you enjoy this. Leave a review please. xD
Miss Muffin x